One God, One Aim, One Destiny

[RMX]

http://www.raceandhistory.com/Historians/marcus_garvey.htm



"I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, and to realize themselves."

   --Marcus Garvey,
   Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1937


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In several ways, and certainly from political and cultural standpoints, we are still weighing the monumental impact of Marcus Garvey around the world. His clarion call of "One Aim, One God, One Destiny," and "Africans for Africans at home and abroad," still resonate, having an especially significant value in the spiritual and psychological outlook of Black people wherever they reside.

Born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, August 17, 1887, Garvey would be celebrating his 110th birthday this coming summer. Garvey was virtually self-taught, reading voraciously from his father's extensive library. By 1910, and then residing in Kingston, he quickly established himself as a orator, a skill that was the hallmark of his illustrious political career.

For the next four years or so Garvey traveled throughout the West Indies, Central America and Europe, primarily working as a printer and an editor. In England he worked briefly at the prestigious Africa Times and Orient Review, where he came under the estimable influence of Duse Muhammad. Upon his return to Jamaica, he was convinced of a need for an organization to uplift the downtrodden people of his island. Thus was born the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Two years later, after being completely captivated by Booker T. Washington's autobiography "Up From Slavery," Garvey wrote to the great man and was soon thinking of building his own institution modeled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Through the correspondence with Washington, Garvey made plans to visit the United States. Unfortunately, when he finally arrived in America, Washington had died the previous year in 1915, but a visionary like Garvey was not deterred by this setback.

As part of his introduction to the states, Garvey toured the country, lecturing and establishing contacts. It took the energetic Garvey only a couple of years to place the UNIA on the political map, and this notoriety was ushered along by his extremely potent weekly the Negro World.

At its peak, some historians have written, the UNIA boasted a membership of more than four million, with almost as many sympathizers. How it rose to this prominence and its ultimate eclipse which has been insightfully discussed in the works of Robert Hill and Tony Martin. What is apparent in their exhaustive studies is the powerful impression Garvey left on our spiritual and mental health. His fervent nationalism, his belief in self-reliance is an indelible stamp that marks our progress as a people. We salute the magnificent Garvey on this 110th year of his birth, knowing that his prodigious soul-force will carry us through the 21st century and beyond.

Ethiopianism includes the appreciation of Ethiopia's ancient civilization as well as its role in the Bible. To blacks, Africa (interchangeable with Ethiopia) became a glorious, Biblical homeland equated with Zion. The recognition of African roots and the desire for repatriation has been a central theme in New World black religion before and since emancipation. Ethiopianism became a "black religious reaction to pro-slavery propaganda."
Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement developed the spirit of Ethiopianism to its fullest extent.

White people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles. The God of Isaac and the God of Jacob let him exist for the race that believe in the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God -- God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages. That is the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship him through the spectacles of Ethiopia.

A. J. Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey

Garvey's words planted the seeds for most "Black Cod" movements in the US and Caribbean. Stressing the superiority of the ancient Africans and the dignity of the black race, he inspired many successful nationalist movements and numerous African leaders from Kenyatta to Nyerere.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in St. Ann, Jamaica, in 1887, descended from the fiercely proud Maroons. He founded the newspaper The Negro World, which took as its motto his nationalist cry, "One God, One Aim, One Destiny." In 1917, he founded UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) in Harlem. Its aims were described in a speech delivered by Garvey in 1924 at Madison Square Garden, New York:

"The Universal Improvement Association represents the hopes and aspirations of the awakened Negro. Our desire is for a place in the world, not to disturb the tranquility of other men, but to lay down our burden and rest our weary backs and feet by the banks of the Niger and sing our songs and chant our hymns to the God of Ethiopia."

Garvey's goal of repatriation was expressed in his famous slogan "Africa for the Africans." His well-known Black Star Line steamship company was established to trade and eventually carry New World blacks to Africa. This prophet of African redemption was not always successfull in his countless business ventures, but by the 1920s Garvey was the most powerful leader among the black masses in the United States. In 1916, before he left for his US campaign, Garvey's farewell address to Jamaicans included the words "Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king; he shall be the Redeemer."

[Godfather of Soul]

Garvey was a catholic...

[RMX]

Please keep in mind the times and the context, Afrikans in the New World just started to become reconnected with their roots, which was concealed and forbidden for many, many years.

http://rastafarism.free.fr/marcusgarvey.html

Although himself a Roman Catholic, Garvey encouraged his followers to imagine Jesus as Black and to organize their own church. To emphasize that the new church was neither Catholic nor Protestant, the name "Orthodox" was adopted and the "filioque" (a phrase added to the Latin version of the Nicene creed in the early Middle Ages but rejected by the Orthodox) was dropped.

ADD:

I was raised Catholic as well, it's stems from the systematic oppression that encompasses the world we presently find ourselves in. 

[Godfather of Soul]

Is that a rastafari site?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_garvey

Garvey himself never identified with the Rastafari movement

http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/ganja/analyses/Garvey&Rasta.html

Garvey BECAME catholic, he was raised methodist.  A slight incongruity that flies in the face of his political beliefs.  You can say something about your own personal life, but you are not Garvey and therefore it's just another anecdote. 

I was raised a baptist.  I am now an atheist.  My personal anecdote has no bearing on Garvey.

[RMX]

Just like Jesus never identified himself with Christianity.

[Godfather of Soul]

Because that would make no sense.  There was no Christianity while Jesus was alive.  Rastafarianism co-existed with Garvey.  He had several important disagreements with it, most surrounding Selassie and his supposed divinity. 

[RMX]

It's called progess and the more we progress the more we are going to realize (rather I and others) that going back back is where the real answers are found.  It's becoming more commonly known now.   But I am talking spirituality with someone who doesn't even acknowledge spirit. 

There was no Christianity while Jesus was alive

This leads to another, much more important question:  What was Jesus teaching then?   


Anyways, the point of the thread is discuss Marcus Garvey.  Not focus on any specific religious method but rather that he had faith and it was a part of his persona.   If you got a problem with what he was or not, then that's on you. 

"Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king; he shall be the Redeemer."

 

[Godfather of Soul]

Progress is not moving backwards. What's becoming more commonly known now is that there is little or no evidence for divine intervention in our day to day lives and all religious prophecy has failed to come fruition, especially the prophecy with some sort of specificity.  Garvey was no primitivist. He was not an advocate of moving backwards, he was an advocate for moving Africa forwards through pan-African solidarity.
 
http://www.rism.org/isg/dlp/ganja/analyses/Garvey&Rasta.html

I often talk politics with someone who has no political philosophy, or at least a basic level of understanding of politics; you if you don't get what I am saying. 

Just because I don't acknowledge spirituality doesn't mean that I can't understand it and all of its irrationality and reactionary structure.   To say that I must be spiritual to understand spirituality is like saying that you have to be a capitalist to speak about capitalism.  "You'll only understand it if you believe it..."  That's a paradox which shows that it can never be objectively analyzed.

Lastly, if you think religion was central to Garvey's message, show some quotes other than one and the masthead to his newspaper.  His message was overwhelmingly secular...but the best part of your posting is this:

Two years later, after being completely captivated by Booker T. Washington's autobiography "Up From Slavery," Garvey wrote to the great man and was soon thinking of building his own institution modeled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute.

Booker T...